What are fees really costing you?

Fees look tiny, 1% sounds like nothing. But fees compound just like growth does, only against you. Move the sliders and watch the gap open up.

Starting pot£20,000

Added each month£300

Years invested30 years

Assumed growth before fees6% a year

Old pension fees1.5%

DIY fees0.25%

■ Doing it yourself ■ Old pension ■ shaded = your money lost to fees

The difference, money that stays yours

Why this happens

Fees don't just take a slice each year, they take a slice of every future year's growth too. A 1.5% fee on a 6% return is a quarter of your growth, every year, for decades. It's like a small leak in a water butt: barely visible day to day, but leave it 30 years and half the water's gone.

Check your old pensions Workplace pensions from past jobs often sit in default funds charging 0.75%–1.5%+. Finding them and checking the charges is usually the highest-value hour in personal finance.

These are illustrations, not predictions Growth isn't smooth or guaranteed, markets go down as well as up. The point of this page isn't the exact numbers: it's that whatever markets do, fees are the one thing you can control.